Pricey Vail offers deal on final rest

Vail Memorial Park caretaker Chip Domke sits at the walkway flagstones. ( Avery Cunliffe, Special to The Denver Post )

It's no secret that real estate in the Vail Valley is expensive.

But while living in the tony community comes with a cost, spending eternity there doesn't have to.

Planners of the Vail Memorial Park sought to make it affordable not just to the owners of pricey mountaintop homes but to the workers who toil behind the scenes.

"That was the question of the people on the board — if a bartender who worked for them for 15 years died unexpectedly, and everybody threw $50 on the bar at a wake, could they do it?" explained Chip Domke, the park's caretaker.

"This is very much a friendly option, and it's completely unique as well," he said.

Within the park, a walkway flagstone with roughly a square-foot of space beneath for a biodegradable urn is $2,000 for Vail residents and $3,000 for Eagle County residents.

A spot in a city cemetery often runs $10,000 to $15,000, Domke said.

An engraved boulder in the park runs $4,000, and a memorial bench can be $12,000.

Nearby homes overlooking the Vail Golf Course are some of the most exclusive in Vail, virtually all with the same picture-postcard view that the memorial park has — of the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Gore Range.

To get there, you must take the paved Vail recreation path behind the beaver ponds. A golf cart also can be arranged, Domke said.

Vail resident Ann Smead has seen people bring their dogs or their bikes, because the spot is on the bike path. In the winter, she hikes out to the park on snowshoes with her grandkids to visit the memorial sites where the ashes of two family members are buried.

"I do think it's a wonderful addition to this community," she said.

Residents could and did argue for years that what the town really needs is an actual cemetery, but with the very high cost of land and other constraints, the park seems like a good compromise, Smead said.

The park land is owned by the town and includes wetlands, which are protected by state laws from building, for the most part. It opened in 2004 after years of work by local residents.

"The meadow is very natural, and it seems to fit this community," Smead said.

Diane Lazier visited the park on Memorial Day to put up flags. She set up memorial stones for her mother and father last year, choosing a spot that's slightly up the hill in the trees.

She plans to buy two memorial benches for the other branches of her family.

"It's just as my father would have wanted it," Lazier said. "I lost my parents last year, and I wanted them close."

New to the 11-acre memorial site is a separate "pet park," where families can bury the ashes of beloved pets, Domke said.

Vail real-estate company founder Rod Slifer's dog "Trash," who was well-known around town for his rambles on Bridge Street, is there along with a few other pets, Domke said.

In all, the site is not about dollars and cents but about sense of community, Lazier said.

"The guys who work there are so good and so helpful, and it was really, really important for them to get it right for me," Lazier said. "They went way beyond what you would normally expect."